How Social Media Can Boost Your SEO

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Maybe I'm just behind the curve on this, but it wasn't until recently that I learned about how SEO and social media can work together. I'm not speaking so much to the actual practice of SEO, but I'm speaking more to the practice of using social media to determine your SEO keywords. If you're a startup or getting into a new space, it can be beneficial for you to know what other people are saying about the space you're getting into. Social media is the best way to do this.

Want to know what people are saying about your space, or your brand specifically? Twitter search should be your friend. In helping other people think through this process of SEO, I needed to learn about some keywords we should focus on for SEO. I took the Twittersphere. Using Hootsuite, you can have multiple Twitter search streams for different terms. So, this is helpful if you know what space you're getting into, but you don't know what terms you need to focus on. If you're building an app focused on knitting, then you most likely should search Twitter for "knitting." Or "knitting and iPhone."

This takes some time, but after some searching and reading, you can find valuable content that other people are writing about your space, and then cater your SEO keywords to terms that are being used most in this content.

Learning what others are saying could be your biggest asset when it comes to SEO for your website. And what better way to find out what people are saying than to do a search of over 200 million active Twitter users.

Josh Burns is the director of web and social media at Park Community Church in Chicago. He loves helping businesses and organizations learn more about how they can use social media to grow and share their story. He is also an avid blogger at joshburns.net.